Lieut. Gen. James Gavin, 82, Dies; Champion and Critic of Military

By GLENN FOWLER

Published: February 25, 1990

Lieut. Gen. James M. Gavin, a World War II commander who went on to become a top Army administrator, a diplomat and a leading management consultant, died of complications from Parkinson's disease on Friday at the Keswick Nursing Home in Baltimore. He was 82 years old and had homes in Wianno, Mass., and Winter Park, Fla.

When he retired abruptly from the service in 1958 after a dispute with the Pentagon over what he considered a diminished role for the Army in missile development, General Gavin was, at 51, the military's youngest general officer of three-star rank.

James Maurice Gavin was a native of Brooklyn who was orphaned in childhood and reared by adoptive parents in the coal country of Pennsylvania. He left school after the eighth grade and worked at odd jobs until he joined the Army at 17.

Setting his sights on West Point, the young private took after-hours courses to gain a high-school education and passed a competitive examination to win appointment to the United States Military Academy.

War and Rapid Advancement

He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1929 and was a captain when World War II broke out. His military career was meteoric. He quickly became a paratrooper and had risen to the rank of colonel by the time he commanded the parachute combat team that spearheaded the invasion of Sicily in 1943.

A year later, when he landed at Normandy on D-Day, he was a brigadier general and assistant commander of the 82d Airborne Division. He was soon given command of the division and after leading the paratroop assault on Nijmegen, the Netherlands, he was promoted to major general.

He was a ''hands-on'' commander who was constantly on the go. At the front, he made a point of talking to soldiers of all ranks and questioning them closely on their roles. He developed the habit, to which he clung the rest of his life, of rising at 4 A.M. and starting his work day shortly afterward.

General Gavin's postwar assignments advanced him characteristically swiftly, and by 1955 he had become the Army's chief of research and development. He was an articulate, even zealous advocate of a strong military force adapted to mobile warfare.

The Rise of the Helicopter

As such, he was instrumental in developing the helicopter-borne forces that were to play a large role in the Vietnam War.

He was also the leader of a group of Army commanders who persuaded the Pentagon to let that service develop long-range missiles, a mission that the Army later lost to the Air Force and the Navy, though it retained control over tactical missiles for the battlefield.

General Gavin was often at odds with the Administration of his former commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He felt that conventional armed forces were being neglected by excessive reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent to war.

Critical of the Joint Chiefs

He was also critical of the role played by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging that it be limited to a planning role and that operations be directed by a completely integrated ''unified command staff'' that would ease rather than aggravate interservice rivalries.

Despite his attacks, General Gavin was marked for promotion to four-star rank. But in 1958, on the eve of that promotion and assignment as commander of the Seventh Army in Europe, he submitted his resignation, saying, ''I won't compromise my principles, and I won't go along with the Pentagon system.''

In retirement, he became a vice president of Arthur D. Little Inc., the industrial research and consulting concern based in Cambridge, Mass. He served with Little until he retired as chairman in 1977, but he was never far from the world military and political affairs in those years.

Ambassadorship and Vietnam

First he was called upon by President John F. Kennedy to serve as Ambassador to France, a post normally reserved for wealthy members of the political party in power.

And in 1967, he returned from a trip to the Vietnam battlefields convinced that ''we are in a tragedy.'' He argued that American involvement was distracting attention from what he saw as a need to counter advances by the Soviet Union in the Middle East, and that negotiatiuons to end the war should be aggressively pursued.

That position, at loggerheads with that of President Lyndon B. Johnson, led some influential Republicans to promote him as a dark-horse candidate for President in 1968, but General Gavin asked his supporters to ''cease all activities'' on his behalf.

Outspoken on Paper, Too

His outspokenness extended to several books he wrote. ''War and Peace in the Space Age,'' published in 1958, was a distillation of his views on United States foreign policy. Among his other books were ''Airborne Warfare'' (1947), ''Crisis Now'' (1968) and his memoir, ''On to Berlin'' (1978).

General Gavin's decorations for wartime service included the Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Silver Cross and the Purple Heart. France made him a grand officer of the Legion of Honor and gave him a Croix de Guerre with palm. Britain named him to the Distinguished Service Order.

General Gavin is survived by his wife, the former Jean Emert; five daughters, Barbara Fauntleroy of New Canaan, Conn., Caroline Gavin of Weston, Conn., Patricia Gavin of Towson, Md., Aileen Lewis of Baltimore and Chloe Beatty of Riverside, Conn.; nine granchilldren and a great-grandson.

A funeral service will be held at 1:30 P.M. Wednesday at West Point. A memorial service will be held at 2 P.M. Tuesday, March 6, at the Fort Myer Memorial Chapel in Arlington, Va.

Photos: James M. Gavin (Mary Cross, 1977); James M. Gavin as a Major General in 1946 with 82d Airborne Division troops at Camp Shanks, N.Y. (Associated Press)